The Actual Dance is a play. It is also a metaphor for the ritual – indeed rituals – associated with the end-of-life. It can be our own journey as we may come to realize that we have only a few breaths left to breathe. In the play though it is associated with the ritual of being with the person one loves most in the world as he or she takes their last breath. Indeed, it imagines this ritual as something beautiful and elegant – a bold and powerful ballroom dance that builds to the crescendo of whatever music the dancers themselves want to hear.

And then it stops. The dance ends as that love of your life evaporates into a spinning tuft of a cloud and exits at the speed of light. There is an end to the music. There is an end to the dance.

Even when the person we lose isn’t as intimately connected as the love of our life; we still engage in this ritual. And it can be wonderful, and intimate and beautiful. I have come to believe that there is a unique gift in being so intimately connected at such an existential moment and that it is a privilege to even have that moment. Yet it is not happy. We do not want to Dance. And so below is my prayer for 2017. It is not a new poem but as this year comes to an end it speaks loudly in my mind.​